


Coriander and Damiana

by Eristastic



Series: Under(fairy)tales [7]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Fairy Tale, Kissing, Other
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-18
Updated: 2016-08-01
Packaged: 2018-06-03 03:04:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6594151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eristastic/pseuds/Eristastic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which hair gets cut and words are said that neither of them wants to take back.</p>
<p>(Epilogue to Daphne and Elderflowers)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> First off, this is an epilogue-type thing for [Daphne and Elderflowers](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6277504/chapters/14384248) but I didn't want to add it as a sixth chapter because of the rating change. If it wasn't obvious from D&E, the characters are very much aged-up. There are traces of unhealthy dependency, but...this is Chara/Asriel, of course there are...
> 
> Anyway, this has some Hardcore Kissing™ and is more foreplay without plot than PWP, but whatever. 
> 
> Coriander and Damiana both signify lust, depending on the dictionary you use.

Much as you love crashing at Frisk’s place and using up all of their good will (they haven’t thrown you out yet, but one of these days you’ll win), it’s always nice to stay at inns. Proper beds, for one. Privacy, for another.

Since you broke your curse, you and Asriel have been trailing around the countryside in much the same way as you had before, picking up odd jobs now and then so you can fund your extravagant lifestyle of eating regularly and sometimes buying new boots. Right now, you’re in a backwater monster village in the middle of a harvest: Asriel does all that heavy lifting he seems to enjoy so much, you do what you can as someone with opposable thumbs. It works.

“Do you think you should cut your hair?”

You look up from where you’re reading on the bed. Asriel’s walking back into the room after washing off all the dust and whatever else it is that gets clogged in his fur so easily. “Is that really the first thing you’re going to say to me? Not even a greeting, just criticism?”

“It’s not _criticism_ ,” he clarifies, sitting down next to you and making the bedframe strain under his weight. “I just didn’t notice how long it’s gotten since we got rid of the flowers.”

“That was half a year ago, of course.”

“Human hair grows quickly,” he shrugs.

“No, I meant it took you forever to notice.” He’s got you concerned now, though: you lift a hand to finger your slightly greasy fringe. It’s hanging over your eyes; the rest of it’s like a mane around your shoulders. You usually tie it up so you’ve hardly noticed.

“I guess it could stand to be shorter,” you say without sounding very convinced. It might be nice to have short hair for once: you’d never been allowed to when you were younger, and you just got used to it.

“Then…” he’s fiddling with his hands, a stupid smile on his face. “Could I cut it for you?”

“You? Can you even hold scissors?”

“Chara, we’re in a monster village: they have different sized scissors.”

You consider this new information. “Yeah, that’s fair. I guess I don’t mind much: if you go get them, you’re welcome to it.”

He practically jumps off the bed and runs out of the door. You stare blankly at it for a minute or two. If he was that desperate to do it, you wish he had just told you: he gets weird urges sometimes, you know, but you’re used to that by now. It’s going to be a long time before you forget that whole sorry business with the river naiads, though. ‘ _It’ll be great: you just have to try their wine, it’ll be the best thing ever!_ ’ Yeah, right. You don’t even remember what happened, just the morning after and that’s more than enough cause to worry.

The door almost gets ripped off its hinges as he comes back in, wielding scissors bigger than you’ve ever seen before. They do fit his fingers, though, so you’re not about to complain. Obediently, you get into the chair by the empty fireplace and wait as he puts down a sheet around the back of it to catch what he cuts off.

“How much do you want me to cut?” He’s excited.

“I don’t really care. Go wild.”

“Oh come on, Chara, you have to _care_! You’ve got to have some kind of preference, right?”

“Not really.”

“Chara!” he whines. “I’m not going to cut anything if you don’t give me something to work with: I don’t want to end up cutting too much off!”

“Just do it to the back of my neck, then.”

“Your neck isn’t exactly short: there’s a lot of room for error.”

“Then make some errors,” you say airily. “Seriously Ree, I’m not going to care much either way. Go ahead, use your own judgement.”

“You’re impossible,” he says, clearly put out, but you can feel him stretch some of your hair out ready to cut.

“I’m pretty sure you’re the impossible one. Which one of us looked like they were about to have an apoplexy because one poor monster apparently didn’t get the message that they’re not allowed to touch me?”

“You don’t like being touched by strangers,” he says with a hint of sulkiness. You can hear the first snip.

“It was my arm, by a monster, for maybe half a second, to catch my attention.”

“Still.”

You smile at how peevish he sounds, but you don’t turn around: your eyes are fixed on the well-scratched, oversized wardrobe in front of you. “I don’t _mind_ , you great furry idiot. I’m just saying, if someone were to compare us, you’re the more impossible one.”

“You really don’t mind?”

“Impressively selective hearing you’ve got there, but no.”

He makes a pleased sound, because he’s easy to please and you know exactly how to do it. You’ve been learning more ways over the past months, some more inventive than others, and it’s getting to be fun. Most times, with him and your daily life taking up your attention, you don’t even think about the past.

For a few minutes, there are just the sharp snips of the scissors and the soft fall of hair onto the sheet below your head. It’s calming – it’s been a long day and you can almost believe you’d fall asleep here, with him cutting your hair, if that wasn’t a terrible idea destined to end in a detached earlobe.

The pleasant haze of before-sleep is ripped away when you feel something on the back of your neck. There’s a chill where there wasn’t one before, sure, but this isn’t that.

“Did you just kiss the back of my neck?”

“I might have done,” he says sheepishly, but there’s something different about his voice. You recognise it.

“Why do you have to be this embarrassing?” you mutter, mostly to cover your own embarrassment.

“Because I love you.” There he goes again. It’s not the happy, helpless kind of ‘I love you’ he usually gives, and that makes it all the worse.

“Do you now,” you say, perhaps a little stiffly, but it’s the best you can do. You want to turn around and hold his face, run your fingers through the sensitive hair at the bases of his horns and ears, but he kisses the back of your neck again and that freezes you. It’s gentle: butterfly kisses, brushing over the bones of your spine, his hands firm on your shoulders and the scissors apparently forgotten because you can’t feel them.

“I’m sorry,” he says, his voice muffled by your nape. He honestly sounds apologetic about it, to his credit. The effect is sort of ruined by the growl in his voice when he speaks next, though, “I just cut it off and your neck was there. Right there.”

“That is where it’s found,” you say, far more distracted than you’d admit to. “I’ve been sweating all day, of course. It’s got to be gross.”

Never let it be said that you don’t know how to keep the mood.

But he just says, “I know.” And then there’s that growl again, and another kiss, and you’re about to reel around to meet him but his hands stop you.

“Just...just stay there for a while.”

“Okay...?” You can’t quite speak so you breathe the words instead.

For long, stretched-out seconds, there’s very little but his touch. His fingers brush across the back of your neck, dipping past the collar of your shirt and goose bumps flare up with the shiver he leaves.

“Are you going to _do_ anything?” Your voice is strangled: he won't stop _touching_. The fur of his fingers is sending your skin into a feverish mix of tension and oversensitivity.

Instead of giving a real answer, he says “Stand up?” weakly.

You’re more than happy to comply, leaping to your feet and turning around so fast that your still-too-long fringe flies in the air, and you look at him. The burnished copper of his eyes is almost completely black.

“I’ve missed you,” he says, his hands holding the sides of your arms without actually pulling you to him.

“It’s been a week,” you point out in a voice as unstable as his.

“I _know_.” He sounds pained, and you realise what he means by that just in time to tilt your head up. You still know the angle perfectly. You’ve grown to know his mouth just as well.

He breaks away from you almost fast enough to be disappointing, if you couldn’t see his expression.

“Would you…would you mind getting on the bed?”

As if you would mind. He still has no idea how to ask for anything at times like these, but at least that means you’re not the only one breaking the mood. Or – on second thought, after taking one look at his eyes, his slightly parted lips, all of him – maybe you _are_ the only one. But you won’t let him know how weak that expression makes your already-weak limbs, so you smile beatifically (but genuinely, not like a puppet) and walk to sit back on the bed.

The pleasantly high-quality blankets are messy about your hips and you press your hands into them for something to do while he looks at you like he’s ready to eat you. It’s completely unjustified: it really has only been a week, but justified or not, there’s a part of you that would like him to look at you like that forever.

“I really…are you _serious_?” you ask as he kneels to take one of your feet in his hands. Admittedly, you haven’t had your boots on much today, but he can’t be doing this: he can’t actually be-

And then he does lower his head to kiss the nail of your big toe and you don’t think it’s physically possible for your eyes to widen any more than they do.

“I’m serious,” he says happily, pressing his cheek into the top of your foot as if that’s something any sensible person would do (you’re appalled that your breath hitches at it).

It’s a deluge after that, drowning you until you can barely breathe. He moves upwards: kisses on the delicate skin of your ankles, your calf, the back of your knees and up to your inner thighs, whispering words you can barely believe. Like he’s talking to your skin, not you, he tells you he loves you, that you’re everything, that you’re beautiful, and a flurry of other words too sweet for you to swallow. But he means them, you know. They’re true to him, even if they’re nothing to anybody else.

And that’s enough.

You’re staring at the wooden beams of the ceiling, breath uneven, feeling his mouth through the cloth around your legs, when he reaches your hips. His hands are by yours now, and he hooks his fingers in your waistband to gently move it down enough to kiss your hip bones, moving from one to the other and passing over the thin line of hair that leads further down.

You fall backwards onto the bed, your hands digging into the blankets so fiercely that it hurts.

“You’re so beautiful,” he sighs onto your skin, heat and breath exactly where it’ll make you lose composure the most.

“No one thinks that but you,” you choke out without meaning to. You’re not supposed to show him the bitterness. You know he doesn’t like it.

“Chara,” he says reproachfully. “You’re not blind anymore: you don’t get to say things that are as obviously wrong as that.” He slaps the back of your hand without much force, then looks at it thoughtfully. Abandoning your waist (thank any and all deities: you were losing all your ability to think), he lifts one of your hands off the bed and sits back on his heels.

You sit up and watch, entranced, as he brings your knuckles to his lips and kisses them, one by one. For each joint it’s the same, for each nail too, and then he turns your hand over to kiss your inner wrist. As he does, he looks up to meet your eyes and you wonder what he sees: are your pupils as dilated as his? Is your face as flushed, your mouth as visibly freshly-kissed? Whatever you look like, it’s enough to make him hesitate and – for a wonderful moment – his expression is all raw need. You smile. Bringing your other hand to his jaw, you cup his face and run a thumb across his lips. Without missing a beat, he closes his eyes and sucks it, leaning into your hand.

You’re fairly sure you stop breathing for a second, and then maybe for a few more when he takes two more of your fingers in his mouth.

When he opens his eyes again, lips just open, you fall to him and wrap your arms around his neck. He needs to know he’s _yours_. He needs to know that he might be the one who can say embarrassing shit you couldn’t even dream up, but he’s still _yours_.

He moans softly into your mouth, sitting up to push you back on the bed, and you’re sure he knows.

All his words have turned to moans and whines now; desperation lavished on your collarbone, the side of your jaw, up to the lobe and shell of your ear – anywhere he can reach. His hands are braced either side of you on the bed, but yours can move: you fumble with his shirt, clutching the back of it and trying to work the buttons alternately. One well-placed touch and he groans into your shoulder, “I _love_ you.”

And that’s enough for you: it’s everything for you.

He lifts his face, looking into your eyes with all the hunger and wide-eyed thirst he can express, but even with his lips open and chest heaving, he’s waiting for you, for your orders.

“I love you too,” you smile. That’s all there is to it, and that’s all the two of you need.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Who knew this was coming back? Not me.   
> (I don't have any plans for more: I just felt like writing something lewd)
> 
> Rather than pwp, this is plot, then porn, I think. It does contain discussion of codependent relationships, and sort of explicit content.

There’s rain in the air, and you’re beginning to think that you’d prefer if it just got it over and done with rather than hanging over the sky in great grey clouds, making everything muggy down below. You’ve already stripped to a thin shirt – now sticking to you – and you’re considering rolling your trousers up, but since you’re in sheep country, things aren’t quite that desperate yet. You’ve had more than your fair share of ticks and horsefly bites since you and Asriel started on this aimless journey, and the idea of getting more is not, in a word, thrilling.

It’s a mild disappointment to you that Asriel’s fur isn’t frizzing in the humidity. He’s striding on in front of you, padding over tall grasses and carving a way for you to follow, and doesn’t even seem to notice how uncomfortable it all is, his only objective getting down to the river before nightfall. He’s been going at a slapping pace all day, though less so in the morning as the hangover wore off.

“You’re not fooling anyone, you know,” you say, stepping down rather heavily in mud and regretting it.

“What do you mean?” He doesn’t turn around, but there’s no need to: you’re the only two people around. Apart from sheep.

“You’re practically whistling.”

“I could, if you want.”

“This might be surprising to you, but I’ll pass. Did you dislike the wood nymphs so much?”

His shoulders tighten, just a little, but his stride doesn’t falter. “Did you _like_ them that much? We can…I mean, I guess we can go back that way if you really want…” he says, in a voice that expresses his utter hatred of the idea in no uncertain terms. You grin. You haven’t teased him nearly enough about this yet.

“No, no: it’s alright,” you say loftily. “I just thought you _liked_ their parties.”

“Well, I did.” His voice is cautious.

“Until you found out what kind of drunk you are?”

He makes an odd whining noise but doesn’t turn around. “You don’t have to gloat about it, Chara! You’ve already been smirking at me all day! As a matter of fact, I think it was horrible of you not to tell me!”

“It was funny, though.”

“I’ve been making a fool out of myself in front of them for _years_ ,” he wails, putting his head in his hands while still walking. Predictably, he stumbles a few times before evidently deciding that the melodrama isn’t worth it. “And how can you be okay with it?!”

“Well, I mean,” –you shrug even if he doesn’t turn around to appreciate it– “you’re hardly serious. And it’s fun to see you try and chat everyone up. You’re so good-natured about it too: that really shy one just had to stutter one protest and you were pressing a new cup into their hand and going off on your merry way. Straight to another nymph to, ah, ‘seduce’ them, I mean. The dancing was good too,” you say pensively, barely able to keep a smile off your face.

“I hate you,” he mumbles, sounding on the verge of tears.

“To be fair,” you say in an airy voice, watching the clouds above and wishing they’d just break already, “it’s not usually that bad. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you that drunk before. You were well and truly buzzed, I mean. Totally foxed. Appallingly in your cups. Indisputably-”

“Yes, alright, I get it,” he snaps. A deep, rousing sigh, and then, in a much smaller voice, “I’m so embarrassed.”

“Oh, Ree.” You jog a little until you’re walking beside him. He pouts at you with a sidelong glance. That (and the shock of a drop of rain on your arm) makes you smile fondly up at him. “No one thought badly of you for it. I certainly didn’t. I was having a wonderful time with Gwynn while you pursued your inebriated mission.”

Asriel makes a disgruntled sound, barely even reacting as you hold onto his arm. That’s unusual. You wonder if you might have pushed it too far. The moment you wonder this, dread hits you like a punch to the windpipe. He hasn’t ever taken real offence at any of your teasing (not since your one and only real fight, four months ago now, but no, no, you’re not going to think about that) and _logically_ you know he’s not really angry, and _logically_ you know he didn’t mean it when he said he hated you, but logic has nothing to do with this. You can feel your fingers clench down on his arm and you don’t mean to do it, but it’s not something you can control.

He notices, stops walking to look at you properly, and then he’s angled himself in front of you, tilting your chin up to look at him. There’s something damningly tired about his expression.

“Chara, no, don’t: it’s okay,” he says soothingly, running a soft thumb pad down your cheek. “I’m not angry: it’s okay.”

“You’re upset,” you say in a slightly stiff voice.

“I’m…I’m upset. But it’s okay! You make me so happy usually, I’m not going to be annoyed if I get a little upset now and again. You see? You understand, don’t you?”

You nod because he needs you to, and you…you do understand, and you know your behaviour makes it very difficult for him to show any kind of negativity towards you, so you need to be fair. It helps that he links his arm with yours and pulls you closer to keep walking. It’s spitting with rain now, but you don’t reach for the oilskins in your pack.

“I’m sorry,” you say.

“It’s okay.”

You can’t quite correct him, since it would take more words than you’re totally comfortable letting out right now. You’re disgusting. He has to know, but neither of you has ever brought it up. How could you? It condemns the both of you. To live for him was a pretty little aspiration – a flurry of bubbles in your vision, just waiting to pop and sting your eyes. Living for one person means more than you’d thought when you clung to him, desperate for anything to justify your continued existence.

It means you shatter at the slightest hostility from him. Hanging your head, your grip on his fur gets tighter. It’s unfair.

And if that’s just how you are – unfair, demanding, high-maintenance and undesirable – it’s still not an excuse.

“Was it really that embarrassing?” you mumble, hopping over a ditch he clears in one stride.

“ _Yes_. But, I…Look, it’s just…um.” The rain is picking up, but it’s still nicer to lean into him than to pull out your oilskin. “It’s…Weren’t you…” He takes a breath. “I was flirting with people, Chara. Apparently I do this a lot. Apparently it’s a habit whenever I get drunk, and…you don’t seem to mind. At all. And I…well. You know I’m not the biggest fan of other people getting close to you. And it’s kind of tiring. Sometimes. Always being the one to show interest. To show that I care. And it’s not like you don’t! But then…you laugh at me when I’m jealous, and _you_ never get jealous, and I start to think that maybe I’m just…”

He leaves it open, and you don’t rush to fill it. You lean closer into him instead, until you’re breathing in his smell and ignoring how the rain pours down on your hair, dripping down your neck.

“Sorry,” you whisper into his arm. “I’m sorry. I don’t know…I don’t like it. But I thought it’d be…annoying if I told you to stop. I don’t have any right to tell you what to do. I like it when you get jealous, and show that you care, but I don’t…” you swallow. “I don’t want to tie you down like that. In case.”

“In case _what_?”

“In case it’s not what you want,” you say in a very small voice. You’ve been getting better at being honest with him – a miracle, quite honestly – but it’s still difficult.

He makes an exasperated sound. “How could I not want that?”

You shrug.

“Well, I _do_. I do, I do, I…I want it more than you could imagine. I want to be tied down if it’s by you!”

Miserable you might be, but you still manage to smirk. “Uh.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

You smile wider on purpose, wanting to wash everything away with the oncoming rain. “Didn’t you?”

“Well, I mean,” he splutters a little, leading you under cover of a small forest. “If you _wanted_ to…But that’s not the issue here.”

“No, I guess not.”

The rain begins to tip down, a dull, relentless patter on the leaves above you, but it’s relatively dry. Relatively. You’re already fairly soaked, but that’s your own fault and you just sniff as the two of you walk down to where the river should be, if the directions the nymphs gave you are to be trusted. Considering how they were giggling when they gave them to you, you suspect not, but it doesn’t matter much, in the scheme of things.

Just as the leaves under your feet have become more mud than dry surface, Asriel sighs dramatically. “Alright. I think…I can’t make you feel comfortable being, uh, possessive, and I’m not going to try,” (it may be your imagination but you think you hear regret in his voice), “but I can at least keep showing you that I definitely don’t mind your, um, attention, and that actually, if I had my way, I’d probably end up taking it all for myself. Which would be bad,” he clarifies. “But it’s something I find myself thinking, sometimes.”

“I don’t think it’s bad.”

“No, I thought you might not, which is why I made sure to point out that it is, in fact, bad.”

“Boo,” you grumble, probably having too much fun with this, but anything that takes your mind off the dread is a good thing, in your eyes. Anything, but especially his honest affection, given willingly and unsolicited. It’s the sweetest feeling, to receive it without even asking.

Sometimes you need that.

“So you don’t mind?” you ask.

“I don’t. And you don’t mind?”

“I don’t.” What you’re each referring to is up to the both of you. It’s probably better that way: some things don’t need to be discussed at length, if you can just make sure that both of you are happy.

Squeezing his arm, and having yours squeezed in return, the two of you walk down to the river.

 

How that then turned to this, is a mystery to you.

“Are you sure?” you ask, dubiously trying to tie a scarf around Asriel’s eyes. It’s a fiddly process, with very different obstacles to work with compared to a human face, but you manage it in the end. Skirting around loose stones, you walk behind him to tie it up.

“I’m sure. It’s something I’ve been wondering about for a while.”

“You do have a habit of getting these ideas and not letting them go,” you nod, tying off the knot. “Can you see anything?”

“Not a thing,” he says cheerfully. Or as cheerfully as can be expected from someone kneeling on debatably dry sand under an overhang of moss-covered rock that drips every so often. There’s a diminutive waterfall a few paces from you, drowning out anything too quiet. After walking along the river, it was the first shelter-like place you came to as the sun began to set, so you set up a fire and ate, and then you started talking. In retrospect, that was probably a mistake, since its direct consequence is whatever the fuck you’re doing now.

You give the knot a pat for good luck and shuffle back in front of him. The position was chosen with care: he’s far away enough from the fire that he won’t end up hurting himself, but close enough that he’s not in danger of falling into the curve of the river nearest to you. And close enough that you can actually see him, of course. That’s a perk. He’s kneeling in front of you, the firelight brushing over an awful lot of white fur, it being too hot to bother with shirts apparently, and there’s a slight vulnerable twinge to his expression. Definitely a perk.

“I’m still not sure about this,” you say. “Is it comfortable?”

He lifts a hand to fiddle with it. “It’s alright. Not the most comfortable thing I’ve ever worn, but you know. It’s fine.”

“Well. If you say so, then.”

“It’s…” he laughs self-consciously. “It’s kind of embarrassing. But good, I think. I like the idea of not being able to see anything, and only having you there.”

“Scandalous,” you say lightly, but there’s something a little rough at the back of your throat and you cough to correct it.

“Maybe. Was it like that for you?”

Was it ever.

“I suppose. Sometimes.”

“You’re a terrible liar, you know?” he laughs.

“I am _not_.”

“Either way, it makes me happy to think we can share this. And I think…maybe it’s the wrong reaction, but every time you say you’re insecure about how I feel about you, in whatever way – whether it’s because you think I’m just a naïve idiot who doesn’t know what he’s feeling, or because you think I don’t want to be weighed down by you or something, which is nonsense, incidentally – I just…” he smiles, and it seems so much warmer in the low light, even with his teeth glinting. “I want to show you how wrong you are.”

For a second, all you can hear is the steady rush of water and an uncomfortably loud pulse in your ears. You smile. “You’re a force to be reckoned with, did you know?”

“I’m really not…”

“You are,” you say, shuffling forwards, ignoring the scrape of sand on your knees through the thin fabric. “You really are,” you say, quieter, and reach forwards to brush your palms up the sides of his head. Taking hold of his horns, you bring his head down so you don’t have to stretch as much to kiss him.

His hands settle comfortably on the small of your back, pushing you forwards so you arch your chest against his. It’s a strain, so – running your tongue over his bottom lip and biting, just enough to make him gasp – you move closer and straddle his thighs with your own. A roll of your hips against his has him growling into your mouth, pressing his hands into your hips and massaging down your thighs a touch ferociously. Just a little, and that’s fine. It’s what you want, after all. If you have to be provocative to get it, you will.

Fluttering your fingers down the back of his head, you move them to cup his chin, stroking down the jut of his throat before wrapping round his neck properly. It’s luxurious, to forget the stepping stones of insecurity and to plunge straight into the depths of everything he allows you – _gives_ you. It always has been.

With a brief kiss of your lips, he moves back and says, breathlessly, “Can I try something?”

It doesn’t fill you with confidence, but you feel too light to do anything but nod and murmur a noise that sounds enough like assent for him to get it. Gently – infinitely gently – he moves forwards, holding you steady against his chest as he lies you down on the ground in front of him. He puts his hands either side of your head, and then (after a few rearrangements of your legs) he’s the one straddling your hips, towering over you.

“I’m going to get sand everywhere,” you point out.

“No you won’t,” he lies, or it must be a lie. It doesn’t really matter, because then he’s sitting back on his heels, and it’s almost hypnotising to watch the muscles of his thighs at work. After a little fumbling to find it, he picks up one of your hands and holds it in his. “Can I?”

Asking to kiss your hand is the stupidest thing you’ve heard all week. You roll your eyes.

“Yes, of course you can, you absurd-” you cut yourself off with a choked gasp when what started as a lick up your palm turns to him taking your index and middle fingers into his mouth, sucking on them. It’s wet and warm and shouldn’t by any means be arousing, but it is. It looks like he’s concentrating so hard, making love to your fingers, and you can physically feel your breath grow shorter. He pulls off in what has to be the most shameless way possible, angling your palm up to kiss it again, moaning softly. And then, as if it were the most proper thing in the world, he kisses the back of your hand.

You don’t get a chance to recover. You can only stare with wide eyes at the night sky, half-covered by the rock overhead, as he kisses the long-healed scars on your hand, down your wrist and arm, still holding your hand as if it were something precious. “I _love_ you,” he exhales, and that makes it worse, because there couldn’t be anything more frighteningly genuine. “I want to show you, I want you to know how much. I want you to see how I love everything of you, no matter what you think of yourself. I want to kiss every part of you.”

“What’s stopping you?” you choke out in a spectacularly bad attempt at showing you’re in control of yourself. He doesn’t seem to notice: at your words, he lifts blindfolded eyes to you and makes a strangled sound. Arching his back, he leans down to your throat, putting your hand down so he can undo the laces at your collar. He’s clumsy about it, but whether that’s due to the blindfold or his shaking fingers, you don’t know. You reach up and help him, and when your shirt is unlaced down midway, you let your hands fall away, lean your head back and squeeze your eyes shut.

There’s coolness around you: the damp sand, the faint spray of water against your feet, the night air, but he overshadows it all with his warmth. With eyes closed, you can feel it all the more. Kisses – hot, wet, soft with the fur around his mouth – scatter on your body. Along your collarbone, the birthmarks on your shoulders, the hard centre of your ribcage, down the curve of one breast and up the other, tracing down to your navel. He avoids the places he knows you don’t like; the hardness of teeth slide against your skin but he never bites; and though he – twice your weight easily, and thrice as strong – cages you in with arms and legs, you don’t feel anything but safe. Or you do: you feel loved.

It takes you a few moments to realise he’s speaking, because he does it so quietly compared to the waterfall behind him, small as it is. But it comes out in breaths: tiny, detached thoughts as he worships your body, and you feel like even breathing is difficult. You can’t ignore him as he says that he loves you, he wants you, he needs you, that he couldn’t imagine it would be so overwhelming to have no sight with only your body at his fingers. Like you’re his entire world.

It’s stupid, all of it: it’s so fanciful and stupid, and you feel like you’re melting.

It might as well be that way: with the world shut out, you feel like melting into him. It would be more practical, you figure. But it would also ruin everything else, and this is enough: to have him murmuring, kissing, licking along your hip bones and thighs is more than enough. It has you panting as he helps you out of your trousers; it has blood thrumming in your crotch as he kisses along the inside of your thighs, apparently unaware of how his nose and cheeks rub against you teasingly.

“Come here,” you say weakly, opening your eyes. He comes into your arms with a whine, kissing you hard on the mouth and pressing his hips against yours. You move together, desperate for friction now, so much that you can’t be bothered with delicacy. There’s always time for delicacy later – say, when you’re not going quick and dirty on the banks of a river – and it’s what both of you want.

Because your nails have fewer sharp edges and you don’t trust the steadiness of Asriel’s hands when he’s excited, you reach a hand down from his horns to between you, palming the both of you with varying levels of efficacy. He moans into your mouth and you give in, bringing your other hand to work the two of you at the same time. It doesn’t take long before you’re both coming messily, a few moments apart, his cry echoing in your ears to push you over the edge.

Lest he crush you, he rolls over before collapsing to the ground. You’re both breathing heavily. Holding hands, you stay quiet for a while, listening to the water and the campfire crackling briskly. Though you’d have been happy to stay like that until you fell asleep, you feel a mosquito bite your arm and slap it, swearing.

“What’s wrong?” Asriel asks blearily.

“Mosquito bit me,” you say in dark tones, just daring him to gloat about his thick coat of monster fur that apparently protects him from most bug bites.

But he just says, “Oh, that’s annoying,” and, opening his arms, gestures for you to come cuddle up against him. You do.

“We need to wash,” you point out.

“In the morning.”

“You’re still wearing that blindfold.”

“All the better for sleeping in,” he yawns, which sets you off too.

“Oh, have it your way,” you sigh, pressing your cheek into his chest. It’s not as if the two of you haven’t woken up to downpours, swarms of insects, or herds of various wild and domesticated animals before. You can do without a proper shelter again. With Asriel slowly falling asleep next to you, you’re not sure you’d have it any other way.


End file.
